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Kemen Austin

Bio

Kemen is a Research Associate in the People and Ecosystems Program. Her work focuses on recognizing and incorporating the value of ecosystem services, in particular the value of tropical forest ecosystems for climate change mitigation, into land use decision making. Kemen currently provides guidance and technical support to several projects at WRI that support forest monitoring and low emissions land use planning.

Prior to joining WRI Kemen worked with The Nature Conservancy to estimate forest carbon and carbon changes due to small holder agricultural production in the Adelbert Mountains of Papua New Guinea. This work included providing training on community-based forest mapping and monitoring to local stakeholders.

Kemen holds an MA and a BSc in environmental science from Brown University where her research included quantifying terrestrial carbon stocks and fluxes due to residential development in New Hampshire, and due to mangrove wood extraction in Sulawesi, Indonesia.

Indonesia’s forest moratorium, a policy aiming to protect an area the size of Japan from development, represents one of the most ambitious conservation schemes ever established in the country. But is it actually making progress in improving the forest sector?

Less than four months ago, millions of people across Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia were choking on the worst air pollution ever recorded in Southeast Asia as hundreds of fires burned across Sumatra. The fires caused serious damage, eliciting a public health emergency, closing schools and harming tourism and other businesses.

This week the Sultan of Brunei is hosting many of Asia’s heads of state for the 23rd Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit. Preventing new fires and haze are high on the agenda. Key decisions and actions are urgently needed from the presidents and prime ministers this week.

Over the past few days, WRI has been tracking the location of forest and land fires on Sumatra, an island in western Indonesia. In this update, WRI examines the historical trends of forest fires in Sumatra. Read our previous analysis.

Fires continue to burn in Indonesia, spreading haze and suffering across the country and into Malaysia and Singapore. New research from the World Resources Institute reveals troubling trends about the blazes:

The current fires are not beyond the normal historic range for fires in the region, but that may change as the fires continue to burn heavily.

The recent fires are part of a longstanding, endemic crisis of forest fires and land clearing in Indonesia, and bold action is needed to prevent the crisis from escalating.

In this new analysis, WRI examines the historical trends of forest fires in Sumatra. Rapid analysis from WRI finds that the current forest fires observed in the Riau Province fit into a larger pattern of widespread forest and land fires. However, June 2013 is on track to be one of the worst months on record since 2001. Evaluation of recent wind patterns explains why the fires’ impact was felt so acutely in Singapore.

WRI explored these trends using two key data sets:

Historic fire alerts from NASA’s Active Fire Data, which shows fire alerts for the period of January 1, 2001 until the present.

Information on air dispersion to Singapore derived from NOAA’s HYSPLIT model, which takes into account meteorological data and can be used to estimate the most likely path that air traveled to reach a particular location at a given time.

Indonesia’s President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono made a bold and courageous decision this week to extend the country’s forest moratorium. With this decision, which aims to prevent new clearing of primary forests and peat lands for another two years, the government could help protect valuable forests and drive sustainable development.

Enacted two years ago, Indonesia’s forest moratorium has already made some progress in improving forest management. However, much more can be done. The extension offers Indonesia a tremendous opportunity: a chance to reduce emissions, curb deforestation, and greatly strengthen forest governance in a country that holds some of the world’s most diverse ecosystems.

Boosting Achievements from Indonesia’s Forest Moratorium

Indonesia ranks as one of world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitters, largely due to the clearing of forest and peat lands. The forest moratorium aims to address this problem by prohibiting the award of new licenses to clear or convert primary natural forests and peat lands to agriculture or other uses. This will encompass an area of over 43 million hectares of land. Forest users with existing licenses are still allowed to operate in these regions, and there are several exceptions to the rule.

Today WRI releases a working paper that provides new information about Indonesia’s moratorium on new forest concessions. Our analysis concludes that the moratorium alone does not significantly contribute to Indonesia’s greenhouse gas emission reduction goal of 26 percent by 2020.

Today WRI releases a working paper that provides new information about Indonesia’s moratorium on new forest concessions. Our analysis concludes that the moratorium alone does not significantly contribute to Indonesia’s greenhouse gas emission reduction goal of 26 percent by 2020. However, the moratorium does support these goals in the long-term by “pausing” business-as-usual patterns to allow time for needed governance reforms.

Though forests play an essential role in international efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the development of systems to monitor deforestation and forest degradation has been slow. This is due to the demanding technical requirements and the large capacity gaps in many countries. Measuring and monitoring change on the ground and via satellite in a consistent way is no easy task.

Countries need to develop national measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV) systems to monitor progress towards achieving REDD+ goals. Establishing procedures to do so would be a significant outcome of the UN climate negotiations in Durban. This task falls to the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA).

Publications

Lessons from Cameroon, Indonesia, and Peru

This working paper examines the institutional, human resources, and financial capacities of three countries that have developed a forest and land-use information system, and highlights common enabling factors and challenges.

Forest carbon monitoring systems are necessary for tracking the effectiveness of national forest policies aiming to mitigate GHG emissions. This issue brief highlights the broad, fundamental technical capacity needs for forest carbon monitoring based on an assessment of current capacity gaps in...

Key Findings and Next Steps

This Working Paper analyzes Indonesia's moratorium on new licenses in primary natural forests and peat lands. The research seeks to better characterize the moratorium's potential impacts and identify opportunities for improvement....

Incorporating the Perspectives of Local Stakeholders for Improved REDD Design

This working paper summarizes the feedback and conclusions from a series of workshops for local and indigenous communities in Cameroon and the DRC held in 2008 and 2009, discussing REDD design and implementation.